The present invention relates to footwear and other garments with lighting elements. Footwear and garments with flashing lights have been popular for a number of reasons, including safety, an attractive appearance and simply for a novelty effect.
Lighting units for footwear have typically included a light source, such as one or more light-emitting diodes, a power source, such as a battery and a switch to cause the power source to be connected to the light or lights. Often such units will include electronic circuits which can control the time such lights are actually illuminated, which limits the power consumption, saving the battery. Short-term flashing often makes the display more visible, adding to the safety provided by the units. It also makes a more attractive eye-catching display.
A number of different types of lighting units or circuits have been described in the. prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 4,158,922 to Dana III includes a mercury switch which responds to movements of the foot to turn a light on and off. A mercury switch operated system is also taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,848,009 to Rogers. U.S. Pat. No. 5,903,103 to Garner includes an oscillator activated by a switch and effective to illuminate lights in shoes when the shoe is lifted from the surface.
Various arrangements have been developed for minimizing battery drain. Applicant""s earlier U.S. Pat. No. 5,477,435 issued Dec. 19, 1995, now RE 37,220E shows a light module With an LED having one terminal in contact with one side of a wafer battery, and the other terminal spaced away from the battery but including a weight which will cause the upper terminal to move by inertia in response to a shoe striking a surface to contact the battery to illuminate the LED. In this way, the LED is not illuminated and does not draw power from the battery when the module is at rest. Other modules for illuminating lights in footwear are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,408,764 and 5,932,975. U.S. Pat. No. 5,932,975 also includes microcircuits with a photosensitive switch to cause illumination to fade and then shut off entirely with full daylight. This is one of a number of battery-saving arrangements in the art.
In the case of other clothing, such as, for example, jackets, it is quite feasible to sew in or otherwise secure the system in the garment. Light from a LED is transmitted through a clear, flexible material, such as plasticized polyvinyl chloride, sewed to the sleeves of the jacket, for example. Such a system is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,649,755. There is also an interest in forming such transparent, light-transmitting materials into interesting light flashing patterns along the vamps of the shoes as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,857,273.
As a result of observing various types of shoe or clothing illuminating arrangements, it occurred to applicants that an interesting and novel effect would be created if the illumination could be made responsive to the weight or magnitude of the impact of the shoe against a surface.
Applicants have determined that with the state of the art now including microcircuits which can control the timing of illumination of lights in illuminated footwear, it would be desirable to produce a light module which produces an output varying with impact of the footwear against the surface or even movement, such as an arm or leg in the case of clothing other than footwear. Such a light module would tell one who was watching the illumination from footwear or clothing so equipped whether the wearer of the footwear was walking slowly, or fast or running hard. The availability of comparatively inexpensive miniaturized, but rugged, integrated circuits make it possible to use somewhat more complex control circuits in a module which can be carried in the heel of a shoe or concealed in seams or pockets in clothing.
Applicant""s module includes an inertia responsive spring switch in the form of a coil of wire which is cantilevered over an electrical contact on a printed circuit board. With an impact of the footwear against a surface or abrupt movement of body members containing the module, the spring will tend to bounce against the electrical contact a number of times and the number of such contacts will vary depending upon the force or magnitude of the impact, thereby producing a series of positive or negative going electrical spikes or pulses. These spikes or pulses are supplied to a counter circuit which divides or multiplies the number of the pulses by a factor of, for example, four. This results in a number of pulses which still vary with the force of the impact.
This pulse signal is then connected to a synchronous, four-bit counter which distributes the pulses sequentially to a plurality of light sources, in this case three, LEDs which flash in sequence, the number of flashes depending on the number of pulses supplied to the synchronous counter circuit. Of course, there may be fewer or more than three LEDs. Alternatively, the LEDs may be connected to flash simultaneously.
Also receiving a pulse input from the string of pulses produced from the switch at impact is a timer circuit. This pulse input starts the timer circuit counting time for a set period, such as one second, after which it supplies a reset pulse to the synchronous four-bit counter, causing it to stop counting and to return to a zero input condition. This stops the LEDs from flashing until the next impact or force initiates a new string of pulses. The number of flashes per impact then varies with the force of the impact; however, the flashes will continue for only the time set on the timer. In this way, one shoe of a pair will normally flash only for a time during which the other is not flashing.
Similarly, if the LEDs are located in sleeves of a jacket, and movement or force of a wearer""s arm causes the spring switch to produce pulses, the LEDs in the sleeves will flash and this will continue until the timer stops counting, after which there will be no more flashing until the next such force occurs.